The United States Postal Service (USPS) receives hundreds of thousands mail pieces on a daily basis from printers, premail processors and sorts and other entities for sorting and distribution. In many cases, these mail pieces are bound in bundles with combinations of plastic wrap and straps, the plastic wrap typically being a polyethylene or ethylene copolymer film while the straps are formed from nylon, polyester or a similar high-tensile strength material. Although these bundles are normally light enough to be readily handled, the straps and plastic wrap must nonetheless be removed, an awkward and time consuming task. After the mail has been unbundled, it must then be faced and edged prior to being fed to an automated sorting machine.
Currently, the process of unbundling, edging and facing mail is performed manually on an ad hoc basis. In some instances, the operator picks up an incoming bundle from an arriving container or transport, slices and removes the straps and plastic wrapping from the bundle using a hand-held knife. The unbundled mail must then be faced, edged and transferred to another container for transport to an automated sorter. These manual activities involve a large number of bends, lifts and turns on the part of the mail handler, motions that are ergonomically inefficient and time consuming. The present invention addresses these deficiencies.